How digitally civilized am I?

I'm not even sure what that means. The word "civilized" has always had a negative connotation to me. It's the barrier early settlers in America used to divide themselves from the savage natives. Perhaps the Native AMericans weren't as technologically advanced as the settlers, but they weren't less civilized. Settlers came in and practically committed genocide, killing or driving Native Americans off the land. They disrupted the harmony with Nature the Native Americans worked so hard to preserve. Look at the social dynamics of the two groups: the Native Americans had a sense of unity and worked to preserve their society and culture, while American settlers fought wars on enormous scales and used everyone and everything to accomplish their goals with complete disregard. In a lot of ways, the settlers were the savages, not the Native Americans.

Today, the word "civilized" is no easier to define. Think of the two camps of closed source and open source software. Companies like Microsoft, Apple, and hundreds of others have helped shape modern society with their products and services. But so have the thousands of open source projects contributed by everyone from programmers at home to the same large corporations. These projects are no less important. Both camps have pretty different philosophies, but both are equally influential on digital society. How can one define who is less "civilized" than the other?

A better word to use here would be "aware." How digitally "aware" am I? Using "aware" instead of "civilized," or even using "civilized" in the sense of digital cultural awareness is much more comfortable. As our culture becomes more and more tied to the digital medium, it is important to be aware of what is going on, and participate as an active member of that society. As a software engineer,  I love learning about the hundreds of different ways people use the Internet and their digital devices. For Christmas this year, most of my presents involved thinking about the ways various family members use technology and finding ways to improve them. For my sister-in-law, that meant installing a new hard drive in her MacBook so she doesn't have to spread her music library across three different drives. For my Mom and my parents-in-law, that meant setting up new wireless routers that can handle the bandwidth of the myriad of digital devices connecting to the Internet at home. It was a busy but satisfying Christmas.

I like to do this year around. Every day I read many, many articles online about new technology, and I always reflect on how I can use what I learned to help someone I know. I would say my awareness of what's going on in digital society is quite good. However, another side to true digital culture awareness is not simply knowing what's out there and consuming, but participating and creating. In this area I could improve. I create software that is used by college professors and students across the nation, but I don't always take the time to respond to people's questions on forums even if I know the answer, or actively blog or tweet. I often feel guilty that I am such an avid digital consumer, but not always the best digital participant. It's one of my New Year's resolutions, and this post is a great start.